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PostCoder API - Developers

The service provides lookup and validation of U.K. physical addresses for web applications that accept user input addresses. It compares data entered by a user against continually updated postcode address file (PAF) data from the British Royal Mail service, GeoData, and other authoritative sources of valid physical or delivery addresses. This validation improves delivery performance by ensuring that addresses provided by users actually exist and are correctly formatted. The same functions are available either as an installed product using local data or an interactive web service.

API methods support queries submitting character strings for a postcode and thoroughfare address as entered by the user and validate the address indicated, then return the correct version according to the Royal Mail or other recognized authorities. Where no exact match is found, the API returns an array of valid addresses nearest the entered location, allowing the application to perform further processing to select one of them.